CBS (NYSE: CBS) president Leslie Moonves will visit Last.fm in London this week - and is likely to emerge having developed plans to replicate the social network’s music prowess across the entertainment powerhouse’s portfolio. America’s top TV network bought the community for $280 million (£137.38 million) in March. Opening Mipcom with a keynote speech here in Cannes today, Moonves explained: “It’s our first venture in to social networking. It’s social networking about content - we’re a content company. They have great technology. If there’s social networking around music, there should be about sports shows, about news shows... As a result, we view this as a great future possibility for us - (it’s an) advertising base, we’re beginning to sell advertising throughout the world; our users are 70 percent international, it’s London-based and only 30 percent of the traffic’s from the United States.” In theory, that could mean discussion communities around the David Letterman Show or 60 Minutes, not musicians.

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CBS may distribute commercial programming via the likes of iTunes Store but, as opposed to paying to download programming: “Our initial instinct that the advertising model on the internet might be the future ... Supported by advertising is going to be the way to go in many many cases; companies like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) seem to agree.” Asked if CBS could achieve double-digit growth, Moonves placed his faith in online: “We purchased Last.fm, we’ve made 14 investments in things like Joost and different companies like that - and I think the evolution to companies like that will hopefully lead us in to a faster growing business.” And he said the days of TV execs’ dependencies on ratings was “over’ thanks to time-shifted viewing options like DVRs.